1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for processing information relating to a vehicle.
2. Present State of the Art
As known, modern vehicles, in particular motor vehicles, are equipped with a plurality of electronic control units (ECU) that control different subsystems of the vehicle itself.
The electronic control units are typically connected to one another through a serial data communication bus called CAN (Controller Area Network), which can operate properly even within an environment strongly disturbed by electromagnetic waves.
CAN is an international standard, as documented by ISO 11898 (for high-speed applications) and ISO 11519 (for low-speed applications), based on a database that describes the information present in the vehicle network and handled by the various electronic control units. In order to provide access to the electronic control units, each vehicle may be fitted with a specific connector, e.g. an OBD-I, OBD-II or EOBD connector, or other proprietary connectors as defined by the vehicle manufacturers, where “OBD” stands for “On-Board Diagnostic”.
Through the OBD or proprietary connector, qualified technicians like the personnel of car repair shops can interface a specific diagnostic apparatus to the electronic control units of the vehicle in order to read parameters and/or data, reconfigure the electronic control units of the vehicle, and so on.
The information supplied by the diagnostic apparatus is therefore mostly intended for specific use by qualified personnel, typically for diagnostic purposes only.
The CAN network database of a vehicle may be supplied by the car manufacturer only under specific agreements; in any case, this happens very seldom and for specific vehicles only: As an alternative, a costly reverse engineering operation must be carried out in order to rebuild said database.
Generally, only little information can be obtained through a diagnostic connector: in fact, it is generally only possible to obtain, in addition to a number of trouble codes, three signals providing information about vehicle speed, engine rpm and oxygen sensor for exhaust emission assessment purposes.
In the event that the vehicle has no diagnostic connector or that the quantity and quality of the information attainable from the vehicle network are insufficient, it is however still possible to establish a connection to the vehicle network by using appropriate specialised techniques and tools. This practice is widespread among the installers of aftermarket devices, e.g. for installing alarms, parking sensors and insurance black boxes, but it requires the knowledge of that part of the proprietary database which is necessary for interpreting messages intended for a specific application.
However, all of these solutions have drawbacks in terms of time, costs and limitations. In particular, especially in reverse engineering, which is the technique most frequently used by aftermarket accessory manufacturers and installers, customer assistance and incompatibility management costs are very high because it is necessary to maintain a list of vehicles compatible with a certain application without being able to foresee its actual utilisation on new vehicle models.
Such a scenario implies that access to vehicle information is only allowed to qualified personnel, thus giving up a mine of information which could also be used by non-qualified people, e.g. the vehicle user, for all kinds of applications (logging of vehicle performance, fuel consumption and emission data, virtual dashboards, and so on).
It follows that there is a need for allowing any user to exploit such a mine of information whenever he/she uses a vehicle, regardless of the vehicle used by the user.